Hawaii and Most Of Arizona Don’t Participate In Daylight Saving

Hawaii and Most Of Arizona Don’t Participate In Daylight Saving, Clock confusion will occur again this weekend when daylight saving time (also called daylight savings time) gets under way in the United States.

Twice each year this controversial practice gives rise to various questions: Why do we spring forward and fall back? Does daylight saving time (DST) really save energy? Is it bad for your health? There is no consensus, but experts do offer some answers.

But first, the details.

Daylight saving time 2014 will begin at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 9, when most U.S. states will spring forward an hour. Time will fall back to standard time again on Sunday, November 2, when DST ends. (See National Geographic’s pictures of spring landscapes.)

But the federal government doesn’t require U.S. states or territories to observe daylight saving time, which is why residents of Arizona (except for residents of the Navajo Indian Reservation), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands won’t need to change their clocks this weekend. Other states could soon follow suit, or mandate permanent DST, or even do something else entirely.

Tufts University professor Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, said that each year at least 10 and often as many as 30 new bills appear in various state legislatures to advocate either permanently stopping daylight saving or going on daylight saving time all year long.

“It’s an annual treat,” he said, noting that the bills vary widely and could create some real clock kerfuffles.

“This year I think the Kentucky/Tennessee situation is particularly interesting. Each state has two time zones, which adds to the complications, but if their two proposals went through their independent legislatures, Tennessee would be on permanent DST while Kentucky would be on permanent standard time.

“That would mean-and this is ridiculous but true-cities in Tennessee’s eastern time zone and Kentucky’s central time zone that are only 5 or 10 miles [8 to 16 kilometers] apart would have two-hour time differences.”